PORNO COMMISSION DEFENDED BY MEMBER

A friend recently sent me a copy of your July 11 editorial on the report of the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography. You dismissed the report because most of the commissioners, in your view, were "known for their anti- pornography attitudes" prior to serving on the commission.

As a member of the commission who has made no secret of my distaste for most of what we call "pornography," I found this logic perplexing in several respects.

Rejecting a statement on the basis of the speaker's perceived bias, to begin with, is a dangerous business.

Abraham Lincoln was personally and passionately opposed to slavery. Martin Luther King had a personal stake in the ending of racial discrimination. Do the words of these gentlemen mean nothing because their personal "attitudes" were "known"? Or does their value not depend, rather, on the quality of the arguments each presented?

Second, your apparent belief that those of us who had anti-pornography "attitudes" were inevitably bound to vote for "censorship" actually buttresses one of the report's central conclusions.

It is fair enough to say that those of us on the commission were to some extent prisoners of our "attitudes," but why then be afraid to admit that sexually violent attitudes promoted by pornography also have real-world consequences?

Finally, I was distressed at your approach because it failed to urge citizens to read the report themselves and reach their own conclusion. Isn't that how democracy -- and good journalism -- works?